DO YOU SAVOUR THE FLAVOUR?

Ok, so this will be controversial and I expect some comments on all sides, but having been vegetarian since the age of 11 (vegan from 11 to 21), I have to voice this viewpoint every now and then.

**We must drastically shift our perception of our relationship with animals; their barbaric treatment and unnecessary slaughter keep us in a state of unevolved humanity. Feel free to disagree at any point.**

Modern man consumes more meat than previous generations; demand is rising; production is increasing and methods of production are increasingly inhumane; even with increased demand, we over-produce and the senselessly slaughtered are slung from supermarket shelves to make room for more.

Why eat meat when it is possible to live a healthy life without it?

Why call it steak and not cow; bacon and not pig?

Why make dogs, cats and horses our favoured creatures and save them from the dinner-table, yet gladly tuck in to other creatures without questioning the hypocrisy?

As Morrissey famously sang, “Heifer whines could be human cries
closer comes the
screaming knife
this beautiful creature must die
this beautiful creature must die
a death for no reason
and death for no reason is MURDER
and the flesh you so fancifully fry
is not succulent, tasty or nice
it is death for no reason
and death for no reason is MURDER
and the calf that you carve with a smile
is MURDER
and the turkey you festively slice
is MURDER
do you know how animals die?
kitchen aromas aren’t very homely
it’s not “comforting”, “cheery” or “kind”
it’s sizzling blood and the unholy stench
of MURDER
it’s not “natural”, “normal” or kind
the flesh you so fancifully fry
the meat in your mouth
as you savour the flavour
of MURDER
NO, NO, NO, IT’S MURDER
NO, NO, NO, IT’S MURDER
who hears when animals cry?”

If you are offended by this post or by the images, please question why that may be. Feel free to share your views but please be respectful. I am deliberately being provocative and I hope that this has at least made you consider the quantity of meat that you purchase and consume and perhaps where you source this meat from.

Sorry for bleeting on! Off to count sheep now…

“I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry and unhappy like we do. I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings.”
– Cesar Chavez

“I decided to pick the diet that I thought would maximize my chances of long-term survival.”
– Al Gore

“The moment I began to understand what was going on with the treatment of animals, it led me more and more in the way of the path I am [on] now, which is a complete vegan.'”
– Bryan Adams

“‘When people ask me why I don’t eat meat or any other animal products, I say, ‘Because they are unhealthy and they are the product of a violent and inhumane industry.”
– Cassey Afleck

“Every time we go by KFC, my kids ask me to honk and they yell ‘Boo’ out the window.”
– Pamela Anderson

“Suffering is suffering. It is always ugly. It is always unwelcome. It always needs to be stopped. There are no exceptions. A person with the capacity but not the inclination to cease suffering is morally incomplete.”
– Mirko Bagaric

“My perspective of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had thought was an innocuous white liquid – milk.”
– Rynn Berry

“We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
– Henry Beston

“If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit.”
– Robert Brault

“Whenever people say ‘We mustn’t be sentimental’ you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add ‘We must be realistic’ they mean they are going to make money out of it.”
– Brigid Brophy

“Take away Love and our earth is a tomb”
– Robert Browning

“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.”
– Martin Buber

“I just could not stand the idea of eating meat – I really do think that it has made me calmer…. People’s general awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn’t go to them but to us cannot really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because it cannot understand why its calf isn’t by, it can make you think a lot.”
– Kate Bush

“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.”
– Samuel Butler

“One should not kill a living being, nor cause it to be killed, nor should one incite another to kill. Do not injure any being, either strong or weak, in the world.”
– Buddha

“It is more important to prevent animal suffering, rather than sit to contemplate the evils of the universe praying in the company of priests.”
– Buddha

“We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.”
– Rachel Carson

“Isn’t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife – birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes – by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative – and fatal- health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for Peace on Earth.”
– C. David Coats

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”
– Leonardo Da Vinci

“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.”
– Charles Darwin

“You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car.”
– Harvey Diamond

“We will love and respect only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught or allowed to experience.”
– Baba Dioum

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, then we are a sorry lot indeed”
– Albert Einstein

“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages”
– Thomas Edison

“The minority, the ruling class at present, has the school and the press, usually the church as well under its thumb. This enables it to organise and sway the emotions of the masses, and thereby make tools of them”
– Albert Einstein

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
– Anatole France

“We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defence of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.”
– Gary L. Francione

“I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man”
– Mohandas Gandhi

“In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people”
– Ruth Harrison

“We have enslaved the rest of animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.”
– William Ralph Inge

“The human body has no more need for cows’ milk than it does for dogs’ milk, horses’ milk, or giraffes’ milk.”
– Michael Klaper

“We all love animals. Why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner?”
– K.D. Lang

“I became a vegan the day I watched a video of a calf being born on a factory farm. The baby was dragged away from his mother before he hit the ground. The helpless calf strained its head backwards to find his mother. The mother bolted after her son and exploded into a rage when the rancher slammed the gate on her. She wailed the saddest noise I’d ever heard an animal make, and then thrashed and …dug into the ground, burying her face in the muddy placenta. I had no idea what was happening respecting brain chemistry, animal instinct, or whatever. I just knew that this was deeply wrong. I just knew that such suffering could never be worth the taste of milk and veal. I empathized with the cow and the calf and, in so doing, my life changed.”
– James McWilliams

“Intellectually, human beings and animals may be different, but it’s pretty obvious that animals have a rich emotional life and that they feel joy and pain. It’s easy to forget the connection between a hamburger and the cow it came from. But I forced myself to acknowledge the fact that every time I ate a hamburger, a cow had ceased to breathe”
– Moby

“If you don’t want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured then you shouldn’t condone such behaviour towards anyone, be they human or not.”
– Moby

“Could you look an animal in the eyes and say to it, ‘My appetite is more important than your suffering’?”
– Moby

“Recognize meat for what it really is: the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal.”
– Ingrid Newkirk

“But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.”
– Plutarch

“For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
– Pythagoras

“I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty upon the earth.”
– John Ruskin

“The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.”
– Albert Schweitzer

“The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret…..It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”
– Albert Schweitzer

“A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.”
– Albert Schweitzer

“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”
– Isaac Bashevis Singer

“People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing to the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times”
– Isaac Bashevis Singer

“150 years ago, they would have thought you were absurd if you advocated for the end of slavery. 100 years ago, they would have laughed at you for suggesting that women should have the right to vote. 50 years ago, they would object to the idea of African Americans receiving equal rights under the law. 25 years ago they would have called you a pervert if you advocated for gay rights. They laugh at us now for suggesting that animal slavery be ended. Some day they won’t be laughing.”
– Gary Smith

“How can people spend this Christmas season talking of ‘peace on earth’ and ‘love’ and then sit down to devour someone who never knew love or peace?”
– Judy Stephens Snook

“Thou should eat to live; not live to eat.”
– Socrates

“We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson

“One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
– Leo Tolstoy

“Refrain at all times from such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression.”
– Thomas Tryon

“Of all the creatures, man is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he’s the one that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.”
– Mark Twain

“I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn’t. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further.”
– Mark Twain

“Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory– disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.”
– Jonathan Safran

“If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn’t done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit’s eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson’s eyes and ask him if it hurts.”
– Ellen DeGeneres

“I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends – the fear, the terror, the pain – and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being.”
– Rai Aren

“Being vegan is easy. Are there social pressures that encourage you to continue to eat, wear, and use animal products? Of course there are. But in a patriarchal, racist, homophobic, and ableist society, there are social pressures to participate and engage in sexism, racism, homophobia, and ableism. At some point, you have to decide who you are and what matters morally to you. And once you decide that you regard victimizing vulnerable nonhumans is not morally acceptable, it is easy to go and stay vegan”
– Gary L. Francione

“Veganism is not about giving anything up or losing anything; it is about gaining the peace within yourself that comes from embracing nonviolence and refusing to participate in the exploitation of the vulnerable”
– Gary L. Francione

“Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) ‘meet and exceed requirements’ for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.”
– Jonathan Safran Foer

“The sixteen hundred dairies in California’s Central Valley alone produce more waste than a city of twenty-one million people-that’s more than the populations of London, New York, and Chicago combined.”
– Gene Baur

“I wouldn’t touch a hot dog unless you put a condom on it! You realize that the job of a hot dog is to use parts of the animal that the Chinese can’t figure out how to make into a belt? -timecode 1:11:10”
– Bill Maher

“Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It’s because they know what it’s like to be treated like an animal.”
– Chuck Palahniuk

“I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests – and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear.”
– Upton Sinclair

“Violence begins with the fork.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“The path of the norm is the path of least resistance; it is the route we take when we’re on auto-pilot and don’t even realize we’re following a course of action that we haven’t consciously chosen. Most people who eat meat have no idea that they’re behaving in accordance with the tenets of a system that has defined many of their values, preferences, and behaviors. What they call ‘free choice’ is, in fact, the result of a narrowly obstructed set of options that have been chosen for them. They don’t realize, for instance, that they have been taught to value human life so far above certain forms of nonhuman life that it seems appropriate for their taste preferences to supersede other species’ preference for survival.”
– Melanie Joy

“Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action.”
– Thích Nhất Hạnh

““Poor animals, how jealously they guard their bodies, for to us is merely an evening’s meal, but to them is life itself.”
– T. Casey Brennan

“There is something about veganism that is not easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture.”
– Will Tuttle

“Our economic order is tightly woven around the exploitation of animals, and while it may seem easy to dismiss concern about animals as the soft-headed mental masturbation of people who really don’t understand oppression and the depths of actual human misery, I hope to get you to think differently about suffering and pain, to convince you that animals matter, and to argue that anyone serious about ending domination and hierarchy needs to think critically about bringing animals into consideration.”
– Bob Torres

“If you don’t take care of this the most magnificent machine that you will ever be given…where are you going to live?”
– Karyn Calabrese

“Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is.”
– Peter Singer

“Go to the meat market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who naliest geese to the ground and feistiest on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-foie-gras.”
– Herman Melville

“Don’t wait for a better world. Start now to create a world of harmony and peace. It is up to you, and it always has been. You may even find the solution at the end of your fork.”
– Sharon Gannon

“Human beings have capitalized on the silence of animals, just as certain human beings have historically imposed silence on certain other human beings by denying slaves the right to literacy, denying women the right to own property, and denying both the right to vote.”
– Gary Steiner

“Nobody can possibly be so hungry that they need to take a life in order to feel satisfied – they don’t after all, take a human life, so why take the life of an animal? Both are conscious beings with the same determination to survive. It is habit, and laziness and nothing else.”
– Morrissey

“This for many people is what is most offensive about hunting—to some, disgusting: that it encourages, or allows, us not only to kill but to take a certain pleasure in killing. It’s not as though the rest of us don’t countenance the killing of tens of millions of animals every year. Yet for some reason we feel more comfortable with the mechanical killing practiced, out of view and without emotion by industrial agriculture.”
– Michael Pollan

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About neverblendin

David Watters, a graduate of Napier University, Edinburgh, Trinity College of Music, London and the Institute of Education, University of London, has worked internationally within education and Educational Management for more than 20 years.
He has taught extensively within many socially and culturally diverse settings; most recently as a Head of Performing Arts within Further Education.
He is a personal and professional development associate with The Pacific Institute (www.pacificinstitute.co.uk), personal coach, freelance writer and founding member of NBI Associates.
He is a writer on social equality issues, is a key player in the Equal Love Campaign UK and author of the forthcoming book, NEVER BLEND IN which features key voices from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community and which aims to inspire and encourage those who may lack self-esteem or who question their validity.
David is currently promoting a youtube campaign"Give 'em Hope"and is asking individuals, couples and groups to make and share videos telling about the benefits of living with personal authenticity.
He has shared a platform with Stuart Milk and Peter Tatchell and is a supporter of 17-24-30, The Trevor Project, Schools Out, The Terrence Higgins Trust, The Albert Kennedy Trust and numerous others.
His background in arts and education, combined with a solid understanding of Cognitive Behavioural Strategies, and his passion for Equality Advocacy drive every aspect of his work as a personal development facilitator, motivational speaker and writer.
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This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2015 at 3:18 am and posted in NBI ARTICLES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.